No one likes being the new guy. So, in order to help you hit the ground running, we have curated a list of tips that will give you a boost on the golf course.
There are a gazillion tips for new golfers out there, and it can all get somewhat overwhelming at times. No beginner wants to drown in an ocean of golf tips, which were meant for more experienced players.
Lucky for you, we have listed some of the best-golfing tips that will significantly help you during your golf sessions. Read further to find out what PG Golf Links 11 practical golf tips for beginners are!
1. The Foundation of the Golf Swing
Setup, Stance and Posture
If you are new to the game and haven’t had much instruction, you may not realize how important the the setup is to your swing. There are three fundamental things in golf that you must get right: Setup, Stance, and Posture. These three aspects of golf, though basic, are incredibly vital to how your golf shot is going to end.
It may not be extremely exciting news to you, but mastering your setup, stance, and posture takes a little time to get used to. If I were going to suggest one area where you should take a lessons or talking to a teaching pro, it would be when you first start playing the game. We want to eliminate bad habits early on in our playing career.
You will not master the way you stand or setup to your golf shot during a range session or hitting balls for an hour. Professional golfers spend a lot more time working on their setup, stance, and posture than any other area in the game.
Here are some things you should keep in mind while getting into the right position:
- Make sure your feet are shoulder-width apart
- Spread your weight to the center of both feet
- Ensure your spine angle is erect and that your back is not slouching
- Fix your position in a way that when you place the club on the ground, you should not feel restricted in any sense
- For most clubs, the golf club is placed in the middle of your stance
- Remember that for drivers, the ball is positioned towards your front foot
- Your stance for wedges must be more comprehensive than your driver stance
Once you strike all of these off the list, you are already to get putting!
2. Decide Which Golf Grip To Use
One of the first things you will hear about golf is the three golf grips: Overlapping grip, Interlocking grip, and Ten-finger grip. You can try all three grips before you pick the one that you are most comfortable with.
Overlapping Grip: This grip is the go-to for players with larger hands—the pinky on your right-hand overlaps your left hand’s index finger.
Interlock Grip: This one is great for players with smaller hands. Here, the pinky on the right-hand interlocks the index finger on the left.
Ten Finger Grip: In this, all your fingers will be placed on the club. This grip is recommended for beginners and for those who are weaker than average.
Regardless of which one of these grips you choose, make sure you spend your practice sessions hitting golf balls focusing on your grip. Make deliberate practice swings If you spend a range session of 30 minutes hitting chip shots the right way, with the proper grip, you will see improvement over time.
If confusion sets in while trying to grip the club,
3. Using Appropriate Golf Equipment
As sentimental as they may be to you, you might want to pass on your grandpa’s old clubs that have been sitting in the dust for years. Golf equipment built for beginners is specialized in giving all the distance, ball range, and forgiveness they require.
It would be best if you did certain things precisely to get the ball up in the air. Beginner’s golf equipment will make performing this so much simpler. Besides ensuring that your equipment fits your flex, design, and weight criteria, you also need to ensure that it is the correct height.
Standard golf clubs are made for people in the height range of 5’6” and 6’1”. So, if you are height falls anywhere outside of this range, you will most probably need to look for other height options.
Purchasing the right gold equipment is an investment that you would want to make. It is worth spending some good money on quality equipment for your game to reach full potential.
4. Practice Makes Perfect!
If you are a beginner, you better start getting comfortable in the driving range. Learning golf is not an activity that you can perfect in a short period. It would help if you had time and patience to master the skill until you feel comfortable on the links.
The driving range does not have to be the only place you can practice. You can practice in many other places a minimum of four times per week if you are a beginner.
Here are some great tips on how, where, and when to practice golf for improving your skill:
- You can practice gripping your club anywhere, such as your office and home
- Ensure to hit a couple of putts when you get a few spare minutes during the day
- Make some time to drop off at the range to practice for about thirty minute
- Dog-owners can let their dogs chase after some tennis balls they have chipped
- After each round, practice hitting about fifty shots at the range
- You can read some of the several golf books available or watch games to see how professional golfers play.
You can take your golfing skills to another level by investing time to learn how to play a quick, fast game. Changing the speed will give you significant improvement and noticeable results.
5. Picking Up Swing Speed
When we talk about new golfers, we generally see them in two categories: Beginners that take an aggressive swing at the ball, and those who are much more timid. Most beginning golfers are trying to hit the golf ball during their round of golf compared to worrying about creating speed.
As you are getting started and get a practice session or round of golf in, you will understand how vital swing speed is for your game. Many golfers with a higher swing speed will have a more significant edge compared to others. Once you learn how to do this, you can create enough momentum to spin, compress, and hit a golf shot correctly.
You may take a considerable amount of time to significantly enhance your swing speed along with handling your tempo, posture, and balance. Slowing your swing down is not the same as reducing your swing speed.
Decreasing swing speed is not an ideal thing to do while playing golf. The PGA teaching pro will tell you this is deceleration and is not something you aspire for.
The best suggestions a beginner can take and execute is controlling the swing speed, maintaining tempo, and altering the swing speed correctly.
Remember that when your playing partners, friends or teaching pros tell you to slow down, they are referring to your takeaway and transition. If you ever get the chance to watch the players on tour on the practice range, pay attention to the way they accelerate through the ball. Their ball striking with a sand wedge, pitching wedge, hybrid or driver all require acceleration through the swing.
6. Working on Your Slice
In a way, having a slice at some point is a crucial aspect of becoming a great golfer. Slice is something most golfers have a hard time mastering at some time or the other in their golfing careers.
Here are a couple of tips we put together that will help you eliminate slices from your golf swing:
- Ensure that the driver you are using has a sufficient loft so that you can get the ball in the air every single time take a shot. Beginner requires golf clubs that have higher lofts to get extra forgiveness.
- Having a proper golf grip is an essential factor that contributes to preventing a slice. Make sure your golf grip is not too weak and is firm enough to avoid a slice
- Avoid aiming to the left because it will result in you swinging across and ultimately slicing the ball
- An erect swing path that comes externally will result in a slice. To fix this slice, you will require a club to run on a shallower plane and get the ball from inwards.
- Keep in mind that there could be potentially numerous reasons why a slice could occur. However, the most common reason that causes slicing is when the clubface is open at impact. You can work out your slice by observing the angle of your clubface.
If you haven’t done so already, check out our tutorial on improving your golf swing.
7. Learning How to Fix a Hook
Honestly, a hook is a problem beginners rarely face when starting out. A hook is shot that starts out left, and continues to dive lower and farther left as the all travels. (This is for a right hand golfer). Your mis hits with your driver may not result in a hook every time, but if this is the trajectory of most of your bad shots, you need to learn how to fix it.
Here are some great tips for beginners to fix their hooks and hit balls accurately again:
- Ensure you aim right at your target instead of aiming to the right and waiting for the hook. Aiming like this is probably the primary factor of forming a hook
- Beginners must learn how to redistribute weight from the back to the front at impact. As most of you may have your weight focused on the back foot, learning how to shift your weight quickly will prevent your ball from hooking.
- An overly firm grip often makes your hands turn too soon. You can fix this by quickly shifting them to prevent the hooking of your golf ball.
- While lining up to take a shot, ensure that the clubface is square to the target. If you use your hands to close the clubface at setup, it will result in a hook.
- Another thing to keep in mind about fixing a hook is that the clubface is closed at impact. At impact, you need to make sure that it is square. You will notice the difference it makes on your shots.
8. Paying Attention to Balance
One area which is super essential but most golfers face problems with is having balance. It is vital to feeling like you can stand on your feet and take a shot while controlling the swing. Golfers who have mastered this will be a lot better at the game than those who are not.
Working on the balance is something you can do everywhere except on the golf course. When you are home, place your hands across the shoulders to take practice swings. You are not required to hold a club while performing this exercise. This is a great way to gain some lower body strength also while working to make a noticeable difference to your game.
You can make it a bit more challenging by adding some weight (for example, medicine balls, weighted golf clubs). You can also try and improve your balance by activities such as cross-training and even other sports. Golf players need to be in good shape as it facilitates swift movement. Golfing is a pretty physical activity. Consequently, it might take you some time to achieve the perfect balance. This is an essential tip for newbies that people generally neglect giving.
9. Increasing the Pace of Game
One of the most fantastic tips there for beginners is learning how to play golf fast. As long as you keep moving through the game, most golfers don’t care whether you shoot a 120 or 70. Not learning how to look for their golf ball or taking time to get into position will only aggravate all the other golfers.
If you are a beginner, you will prepare yourself to take more shots than experienced golfers. Moving quickly from one shot to another with your golf club in your hands, you will have a decent pace.
To Increase your pace of play:
- Keep in mind what club you want to hit with next
- Parking your golf cart in convenient locations is highly effective
- Do not waste time searching for a missing golf ball
- Stop putting too much pressure on yourself to score well initially
- Focus playing on a set of tees that suits your level of skill
- Do not spend too much time practicing your swings
- It is entirely okay to pick up after having a disappointing hole
Learning how to play a fast game is one of the most convenient things you can for your game and others’. Developing awareness is something that will come to you naturally if you practice regularly.
10. Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself!
We slightly touched this area while discussing the pace of play, but keeping score is not too important if you are a new golfer. Concentrate on hitting solid shots by taking full swings. Focussing on the score puts too much unnecessary pressure on you while playing.
Keep working on your short game and, of course, your golf swing. After a few putts, get off each green after learning how to hit the ball consistently. You can start keeping score once you start seeing a significant improvement in your golf swing.
If you want to make your golf practice more challenging before you start keeping score, you can try taking over three-putts on every green. You can also do another practice to try getting through nine holes without losing control of the ball.
11. Golf Course Management
One tip that is often overlooked while advising beginners is golf course management. Once you start to get the hang of the game, you will understand which golf shots are worth taking and which ones aren’t.
Course management involves learning about both your strengths and weaknesses in golf. Read the following tips to know how to get your course management right:
- For those who play the short game well can use that to their advantage to score.
- Taking shots that you are new to is a risk that you should not take without practice
- Practice keeping the golf ball in the middle of the fairway
- It is not required to use a driver off of every single tee
- Do not limit yourself to using the wedge for chipping and short games. You can use other clubs for those
- Figure out exactly where you want your ball to land on the green
- Avoid any sand, water, rough, etc.
- Take a stroke without overdoing anything when you fall into trouble
- Keep in mind not to play every hole in a straight line. Decide which path you want to take after examining every hole.
Conclusion
We genuinely hope that this golf tips for beginners was super resourceful. We filtered out less useful tips and put together those that are relevant and useful. When you are offered advice, make sure you weed out the ones that do not apply to you.
The tips we have given you are simple, easy to follow, and are super practical. In all honesty, golf is not an activity that you can perfect with a week or two. It takes time to set down your basics, and once you have got the fundamentals cleared, you are halfway there.
Try out all the points we have listed and see what works best for you. Once you figure that out, it will not be long before you hit some killer shots!
Good Luck, and Happy Golfing!Your perfectly optimized content goes here!
